Steph doesn’t come into town much. When she does, she goes straight to the pub.
Standing behind the bar, rubbing a thin towel on the inside of an empty schooner, Helen feels Steph before she sees her. Never been able to say what it is that makes her just know. She slips the phone out of her pocket as soon as she gets the feeling, and sends Tam a quick message—Don’t come in tonight. I’ll see you tomorrow xx. Service here is patchy at the best of times; she can only hope it’s gone through.
Then Steph’s standing in the doorway, squinting while her eyes adjust. Wearing old jeans with stains on the knees, dirt and oil, probably. Ratty Master of Puppets shirt, sleeves torn off at the seams. Hair’s long, studded in places with beads, tangled in almost-curls down her back. It covers most of the scarring on her neck, and the ear that never looked right again, despite the grafts. There’s dark liner around her eyes and a colour on her lips, but her face is rough from life on the land, heavy freckles on her cheeks and deeps lines around her mouth.
Every year, a little wilder, Helen thinks. Every year, a little more beautiful.
“Kids?” Helen asks, looking down at the glass as Steph approaches.
She perches on a stool and leans sinewy arms across the bar. Toys with the edge of Helen’s tea towel. “With their dad. Back at the van.”
Life in a caravan out in the bush, with three kids and a man. Freedom, apparently. Helen’s not sure how she does it. But she knows why.
“Got you all to myself then.” She tries to keep her tone light. But from the way Steph withdraws, crosses her arms, Helen realises it hasn’t landed.
Helen puts the glass away—well dry by now—picks up another. Better to keep busy. The midmorning vibe is quiet. A couple of regulars downing early lunch or late, hungover bacon. Cheryl, the town’s sole nurse, grabbing a bite to eat while she can. Red dust dances in from the road outside, carried on a hot breeze.
“Sign of her yet?” Steph asks.
Helen shakes her head. “Can’t be long.”
They both look to the door at the sound of footsteps, but it’s just some bloke they don’t recognise. “What can I get you?” Helen asks, as he approaches the bar.
He’s too clean to be a local. Hair neat, white shoes, pale blue jeans. It’s a good eight-hour drive from Sydney to get here, and there’s nothing but flat scrub and the beginnings of desert to see, so Helen’s not used to accommodating tourists. “Coffee?” he asks, squints at the chalkboard with the specials scrawled on it.
“Instant,” Helen answers.
He starts to make a face. Stops himself. “Yeah, fine. And eggs? On toast.”
She nods. “Bacon?”
“No thanks.”
Helen shouts his order at the kitchen. He hovers his trim little arse over the stool next to Steph, thinks better of it and chooses a table near the doors. Only good decision he’s made so far.
She’s got her back turned, sorting his coffee, so Helen doesn’t see the moment Patty returns to the pub. But she smells her. It’s the tobacco. It slides up her nose with its thick, sickening tar, then sits heavy in the back of her mouth. Coats her tongue. She wishes she could spit it out, but no amount of rinsing, or drinking, or eating, or anything, will rid her of that taste.
Time touches Patty differently than it does her friends. She ages, and Helen’s thankful for that, but there’s something not quite right about it. Her skin, youthful and a little too clean. Her figure lanky, adolescent. Sometimes she looks more like a life-sized doll than a woman. Helen wonders where she gets her clothes. This time she’s dressed in skinny jeans and a white, collared shirt. She’s cut her hair to a brown bob with bangs. Her lipstick is dark red and matches her fingernails.
“This place is never gonna stop being weird,” Patty says. She leans against the bar. “Still got the old one in my head, you know. Always forget, until I step in here.”
“Been a while.” Greg, the cook, emerges from the kitchen. He nods at Patty as he carries a plate of eggs on toast to the clean bloke’s table. “City treating you well?”
Should know better. Greg’s lived in town forever. He was at school with them, a couple of years ahead. Even asked Patty out once—or was it Steph?—thought he was in with a shot until Helen put a stop to it. He can’t pretend he wasn’t here, didn’t know, didn’t see. Doesn’t remember.
Patty blows smoke through her nose, and smiles in a way that doesn’t reach her eyes. “Still here, Greg?” she asks, as he heads back around the bar, pours himself a glass of water, drinks it in one long go. “Never wanted to, you know, spread your wings?”
A shrug. “Never seen the need.” He wipes sweat off his face with a towel hooked into his belt. “Not like you lot.” Gives her a final nod, returns to the kitchen.
Patty perches on a stool beside Steph, and toys with an almost-empty packet of cigarettes, tapping the bottom so the three remaining peek out of the top.
“So,” Patty says, into the silence that settles between them. They were never comfortable with silences. “You two look”—another twist of that joyless smile—“well.”
Every time, they go through this. Helen’s given up believing she’ll ever be able to satisfy Patty. No matter what happens in their lives—for Helen, travel; for Steph, kids—all they get from Patty is that same dismissive twist of her lips.
“Might as well get it over with.” Steph hunches on her stool. “Katy’s losing her teeth. Jase has nightmares unless he sleeps in our bed. The baby’s started tottering around. We found a brown snake under the hood a couple weeks ago. Matt’s got this weird infection thing going on with his toe.” The words spill out of her, uncontrolled, unwilling. Patty breathes them in. “We haven’t had sex in weeks and, to be honest, I’m relieved. It’s not that I don’t like him. It’s just boring.” The details of everyday life, tedious and uninspiring. Hidden, usually, from the world. “Do you know what it’s like trying to wash jocks in a tub in the middle of nowhere? My hands, for fuck sake. Look like I’m eighty.” And it’s what Patty’s here for.
Well, it’s part of what she’s here for.
Patty’s laughing by the time Steph runs out of steam. “Pathetic,” she says. Taps the cigarette pack on the bar. “Pointless.” Half pulls one out. “Dull.” Then slides it back in. Glances at Helen. “Can you beat that?”
For a moment, Helen tries to fight it. She presses her lips together and her tongue into the roof of her mouth and imagines that she can resist. Or, at least, that she could lie.
“Business is fucked.” The words begin. “One of the little shits from town keeps spraying graffiti on my fucking wall.” If she can stick to whinging about the pub it might not turn out so bad. “I wish I’d sold up when Mum and Dad died. Wish I’d never come back and taken it on.”
Patty smirks at that. “Think you had a choice, do you?” Then her eyes narrow. She leans in. “There’s something else, isn’t there?” Smoke from her mouth stings Helen’s eyes. “Don’t hold out on me.”
“I—” Helen can’t help herself, she has to try to fight it. “I—” But the scars on her arms, the burns hidden by a long flannelette shirt, they tighten, they sting. They start to feel fresh again, like the days straight after the fire. “I met someone.”
Steph unfurls at that. “What? Who?”
“Her name.” Fear sinks into Helen’s belly as she speaks. “Is Tam.” It feels like nausea. “She bought the old post office.” It feels like betrayal. “Runs it like a general store. Whatever you need, she can get.”
“Guess we know what you needed then.” Patty’s words are hot and biting as flame.
“How long?” Steph asks. Her nose is wrinkled, her mouth a glum line.
What the fuck does she have to be jealous about? There might have been a chance for the two of them, once Patty was gone. Helen was open, Helen was willing, but Steph couldn’t handle it. The memories were hard, she said. And without Patty, it just felt too much like cheating. So she ran off and got hitched to the first dick that would have her instead.
“Three months so far.”
“That’s pretty good for you,” Patty says. “I mean, relationships aren’t your strong point, Helen. What’s the usual? A night? A week, at best? Except, of course, for us.” Gestures to Steph. “And look how that turned out.”
Helen wants to argue that she was living a life, seeing the world, didn’t have time to tie herself down to anyone. But she knows that won’t help. Might even make things worse. The clean guy’s finished his coffee, so she takes a moment to step away from the bar and offer him a refill.
“At least one of you has something interesting going on,” Patty’s saying, behind her. “I mean, Steph, come on, better up your game if you want to keep up. Time for an affair?”
“Fuck you, Patty.” There are tears in Steph’s voice.
“Would that I could, love. Would that I could.”
Helen slips the phone out as soon as she’s got her back turned. Can’t tell if Tam got her message. Quickly types another—Please don’t come in tonight xoxo. But pressing SEND does nothing, and the phone seems to freeze, buttons unresponsive.
“Who have we here?” Patty’s suddenly right behind her, peering over her shoulder. But not at the phone. The clean guy looks up, surprised, as Patty pulls out the chair and sits opposite him. “Not from around here,” she says. “How’d you like it?” Blows smoke in his face. “This place, this pub, it has quite a history. Not all of it good.”
“I— ah—” He blinks in her smoke.
“But my friend here, she’s doing a pretty decent job, I think. You can almost pretend like nothing happened.” Patty casts a narrow grin over her shoulder. “Well, you can. I can’t.”
Helen’s holding her breath. Doesn’t have to look at Steph to know she’s doing the same.
“Here.” Patty taps the cigarette packet and holds it out to the clean guy. “Only got three, but the first one’s for you.”
He’s still blinking, frowning like he can’t quite see, as he reaches across the table and takes the first ciggie. “I—” Holds it up, looks at it. “I don’t smoke.” But he puts it between his lips anyway.
Patty’s holding a burning match she didn’t strike, and lights the end for him. “Doesn’t matter,” she says, as he breathes deeply.
For a moment, the pub wavers in that smoke, and Helen can see the old linoleum-topped tables her parents had when they ran the place, and hear Midnight Oil on the jukebox. In the corner of her eye she sees three skinny teenage girls, huddled at the table where they were banished, away from the booze and the weed, ostensibly doing their homework. Helen had a short haircut with a puffy fringe; Steph wearing a velvet choker with a purple gemstone; Patty just starting to experiment with eyeliner. They sit so close, faces together, that their soft laugher and whispered words coil thickly. Their hands, under the table, do the same. Fresh skin that smells like soap and cheap body spray. Not smoke. Not yet.
Helen keeps no ashtrays anywhere in the pub, but the clean guy doesn’t need one. He breathes the cigarette in, all the way to the filter, until the fire dies. The stub falls from his lips. He stands slowly, pays Helen in cash, tells her to keep the change, but his eyes are distant the whole time, like he’s half asleep and all of them are a dream. Hot air rushes in through the door as he leaves. It does nothing to clear the smoke.
“One down,” Patty says.
What constitutes a lunchtime rush usually begins around twelve. Helen’s bank balance wishes there was more to it, but secretly she prefers the pub when it’s empty. Busy taking orders, pulling drinks, all she can do is watch as Patty wanders the room, stopping by tables for a laugh. For a chat.
“Been too long, girl.”
“When ya comin” home fer good?”
“They miss ya, I reckon.”
“Used to be thick as thieves, you three.”
Patty carries her pack with its two remaining ciggies in loose fingers. It dangles as she hooks her arm over the back of chairs and smiles mirthlessly into the faces of people who knew her as a child and should remember. But don’t. Once or twice she draws out a cig, toys with it, holds Helen’s gaze as she goes to offer it, and then stops. Returns it to the pack. Unlit.
“Just look at ya, all pretty and polished. You was lucky, to get out so clean.”
Helen’s scribbling some late order for lunch—steak and pasta salad—looking down at her own hands, her fingers, as she overhears it. The burns on her arms she can cover up, but hands are difficult. She learned to like Europe in the winter, before her parents got sick and forced her home again. She liked wearing gloves.
“Lucky?” Cheryl looks up at that. She’s been here since morning. It’s becoming more and more of a habit, and Helen wonders if she should put a stop to it. No one wants their town’s only nurse to get drunk at lunch. But what right does Helen, of all people, have to interfere? After what she put Cheryl through.
“None of you girls were lucky,” Cheryl says. “If you were lucky you wouldn’t have been in here in the first place.” Cheryl squints at Patty, frowns. “Especially not you, Patricia Hasting. You shouldn’t be here at all, Patricia. You shouldn’t have come back. I remember, I remember—”
This time there’s no smoke, but Helen can see Cheryl the way she looked twenty years ago, young and fresh out of university, believing she could help more people if she worked in the bush but not understanding yet that it would keep her. Consume her. Her hair was permed back then, dyed a yellowy blonde, and when it reflected the light from the flames it shone. Ash on her face and panic in her eyes, as she wrapped Helen’s hands as she doused Steph in water as she hovered over Patty and worked hard, so hard. Screaming that the Flying Doctors take too long and if only she could just call an ambo what was she doing out here in the middle of fucking nowhere.
“No, you don’t,” Patty says, and crouches beside Cheryl’s table. No theatrics this time, no will she, won’t she. Patty offers the nurse the second ciggie, and runs her free hand over the woman’s hair from its grey roots to its faded brown tips.
Cheryl’s frown deepens. “No,” she whispers. “I can’t. Not after—”
“Shh.” Patty takes it out of the pack for her. “Don’t think about it. It’s over. Nothing but smoke.” And the match is back, burned down a little more, the same steady flame. Cheryl’s expression eases as she sucks smoke into her lungs.
In its trail, Helen sees the keys she stole from the wall of her parents” house. Letting herself into the pub, and opening the door a crack for Patty and Steph. Heart in her throat, terrified they would be discovered, Helen posed behind the bar and poured the drinks. They agreed they preferred vodka over whiskey. The booze eased nerves and inhibitions alike, until they were all three dancing in a tight knot of arms and hands to silent, imagined music. Then Helen found a pack of cigarettes, stashed behind the bar. Only three left. But three was all they needed.
Cheryl spits the stub into her empty beer glass and stands. “I shouldn’t have—” She blinks down at it, looks up at Helen. Gone all pale. “I have to go back to work.”
“Fix me up later.” Helen takes a step back, gives her a clear path to the door. An escape route.
Patty strolls back to the bar, perches and cross her legs. “Two down.”
One to go. Helen clears Cheryl’s table, carries the used plates and glasses to the kitchen. Takes the chance to try her phone again, and this time calls Tam. Sweat’s running down from her hair. Nothing happens. No dial tone, no error, just Tam’s photo smiling from the screen, her number flashing but refusing to connect. Helen hangs up, tries again. Still, nothing.
When she returns to the bar she realises Patty is watching her. She has no expression.
As the afternoon wears on the pub fills up. Word must have gotten ’round that Patty’s in town, because by dinnertime Helen and Greg are rushed off their feet. Orders for steak and chips, chicken schnittys, Helen’s mum’s lamb chops and famous cauliflower cheese. All the old favourites. The locals come in and clap Patty on the shoulder and gush over her success and ask her how long she’s staying. And she wears her unhappy smile and breathes smoke all over them, but stays rooted on her barstool, doesn’t mingle, doesn’t chat. Rolls the final, unlit cigarette in her fingers.
“You surprise me,” Greg says, on his way back from passing out plates full of food. He barely glances at her, just waves his hand in front of his face, trying to disperse the smoke that hovers around Patty like cloud to a mountain, like mist to the surface of a cold, still lake. “Haven’t touched a single one since the fire, meself. Can’t even stand the smell.”
Helen casts her eyes around the room. Greg’s not the only one. No ashtrays inside, none on the step either. No need for them here.
“And you.” He lifts his eyebrows at Helen. “Surprised you let her in with those. Know it was an accident and all but fuck. You three burned the place down once already. Not worried you might do it again?”
“No, Greg,” Patty says, smoke rising from her mouth to wreath her face. “Can’t say that I am.”
He shrugs and disappears into the kitchen. The hum and buzz of the full pub falls away, until all Helen can hear is the slow, muted tap of the last cigarette on the bar. And she thinks, finally, this is it. After all this time, after all her visits, Patty’s finally going to take what she’s been coming for. What’s hers.
And maybe that’s a good thing. What have the two of them done with life anyway? Steph hiding in the bush with a man she doesn’t love and brats clinging to her apron strings. Helen trying to convince herself that travel equals personal growth, only to end up back in the same shitty pub in the same shitty town. None of it could fill the hole Patty left in their lives.
So what was the point of living them?
Steph’s gone paler than usual, looking between Patty and Helen. “Of course,” she says, her voice rough, like she’s been smoking her whole life. “Of course you choose her first. It was always her first.”
“The fuck, Steph?” Helen whispers. Is now really the time for her old jealous bullshit? Or maybe it is? The perfect time.
Patty’s smile is low and slow and this time, it dances in her eyes.
“Hel, babe, you holding out on me?” There’s a bubble around the three of them that Helen only notices when Tam’s voice breaks through it. Cheek cupped in the palm of her hand, Tam’s sitting on a stool and leaning against the bar, smiling at Patty and Steph. Silver bracelets bright against her olive skin. Apricot lipstick, and a headband of the same colour wrapped around hair so short it’s almost shaved.
“No,” Helen wants to say, but the smoke catches in her throat and she can’t push the word out.
“Coulda told me you had company.” Tam places both hands on the bar, pushes herself up and halfway over, far enough to work the muscles in her arms and kick back with her scuffed Doc Martens. All to kiss Helen on the lips. Tam doesn’t taste like smoke. Tam is sweet and faintly spicy. “Mates of yours?” She sits back down, all elegance and strength.
When Helen does nothing, says nothing, Tam rolls her eyes and holds out her hand. “I’ll just introduce myself then,” she says. “Tam. Helen’s girlfriend. You are?”
The smile has slid from Patty’s face. In her hand, the last cigarette is still. Frozen.
“Stephanie.” Steph reaches around to take Tam’s hand, shakes it. “So. She calls you girlfriend, does she?”
“Oh, shit, sorry, did I just put my big foot in—”
“Oh, no.” Steph leans back. “Not at all. We’re Helen’s mates, like you said. Since we were kids. Ain’t nothing we don’t know about her. Is there, Hel babe?”
Steph brushes her hair out of her face, a slow deliberate movement that exposes the burn scars on her neck and ear. Tam’s eyes widen. She glances at Helen—at her hands, in particular—then back at Steph, then down to the floor.
“Oh.” Tam takes a deep breath. “Right.” Then looks up, and holds Steph’s challenging gaze. “Nice to meet you then, Stephanie.”
And Helen’s terrified heart has enough energy left to do a little appreciative flip. Because that’s something Helen loves about Tam. She accepts anyone for who they are, their history, their circumstances, their friends and family, hopes and desires. Just accepts it, and moves on. Never feels the need to question them or change them. Not so insecure that she has to be the sole focus of their attention, the most important person in their life. She knows how to share.
The smoke in Helen’s throat keeps her silent, but she pleads with Patty anyway, her eyes stinging, watering. Begging. She’s certain Patty can read that look, knows just what Helen’s asking of her.
Patty turns on her chair and holds out a hand to Tam. “Hi, Tam,” she says. “Hi, Helen’s girlfriend. I’m Patricia. And I was there first.”
“We were,” Steph whispers. Because the three of them together, or apart, they will never change.
Sometimes, Helen worries she remembers her friends through rose-tinted glasses. The wildness in Steph she longed to tame, the neat perfection in Patty she just wanted to mess up. There were tears too, and screaming, the push and the pull of it. The way they tore through her like fire, and she through them.
It’s all so hazy now.
Tam goes to take Patty’s hand, and there’s a packet of cigarettes there instead. One left. She pinches it between neatly manicured fingers, lifts it to her lips. “Been a while,” she says. “Usually, just when I’m drunk. But Hel doesn’t like it and I like her so I haven’t . . . in months.”
The match that Patty holds for her is almost burnt out. Only a small, fighting flame remains. It catches on Tam’s cigarette, and as she draws that first breath of smoke into her lungs the fire finally dies. The match crumbles to ash.
The girls couldn’t find any matches in the pub, all those years ago, or even a lighter. They searched for ages. In the end, they resorted to the gas burners in the kitchen. And that’s what Helen sees, in the smoke of the final cigarette. Patty, holding her hair back with one hand, leaning down towards the guttering blue flame.
“Third, and final,” Patty says. And sets them free.
Steph stands immediately. Doesn’t say goodbye to Patty, doesn’t acknowledge Tam. Can hardly even look at Helen. “Sorry,” she says. Hunches her shoulders and leaves. Back to her van in the middle of nowhere, to mark the slow passage of her pointless life. Until next time.
Helen tries to be glad it wasn’t Steph. Her kids deserve a mother. But it’s hard to be so generous while she’s watching Tam finish the cigarette, suck it down, all the way to the filter. When that filter leaves her lips, lands in her lap, rolls off her leg and litters the floor, Patty is gone. Nothing but smoke remains.
It’s difficult for Helen to believe, at first, because Tam doesn’t look any different. But she’s seen it before, all the times Patty has visited since the fire, and she knows her hopeful, wishful thinking will do nothing. As the evening progresses and the locals finish eating, then drinking, and gradually leave the pub, Tam begins to look worse. It starts with redness in the eyes, tears she can’t control. A cough, deep and tearing. Then the first of the burns bloom down her arms, over her neck. Red and patchy, she scratches at them. Helen remembers that itch. For her, it was a sign of healing. For Tam, it’s quite the opposite.
After closing up, Helen wraps an arm around Tam’s waist and helps her into the cooler evening air. Rubbing her throat, looking blearily up at the sky, Tam leans her head against Helen’s shoulder. As they make their slow way down the dirt road, she starts having trouble breathing.
“I have this feeling,” she says, her voice rough, phlegmy, and painful. “Like I met someone tonight.” Her breath smells like smoke. It clings to both of them. “Someone important.”
Let me tell you about the first women I loved, Helen thinks, when we were only girls. Let me tell you how I wanted to impress them. How I broke rules I’d never imagined breaking, so they’d think I was cool. Let me tell you how I got one of them killed. Doomed all three of us. And you.
But she says nothing, just holds Tam tight while she still can.
Originally published in The Art of Broken Things (ss collection).
